Saturday, March 31, 2007

A head-mounted augmented reality display provides an interface to a pherobot swarm. Arrows superimposed over each robot collectively provide a visible impression of the virtual pheromone gradient. Papers with further detail are available at pherobot

At certain points, it may be desirable for a dispersed pherobot swarm to move out of the center of a room and hide against the walls. To do this, robots near the walls, after detecting the wall, transmit a "wall" pheromone that attracts other robots toward them. When these robots detect the wall themselves, they switch to a wall-parking mode.

These small robots provide emergent group behavior as a result of simple local interactions. In gradient following, a set of robots propagate a "virtual pheromone" signal to one another to establish a gradient. Another robot then follows this gradient toward the originating source.

Pheromone robots can be controlled with a handheld remote. The remote can operate in two different modes. A narrow mode allows commands to be issued to individual robots. A wide mode allows commands to be issued to the entire swarm. In the wide mode, pherobots that receive the command relay that command to their neighbors until received by all others.